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Subject: Re: some questions about chess programs and money

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 14:22:00 04/07/03

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On April 07, 2003 at 17:08:50, Uri Blass wrote:

>On April 07, 2003 at 15:57:27, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>>On April 07, 2003 at 10:15:22, Steve Maughan wrote:
>>
>>>Uri,
>>>
>>>I'll have a bash,
>>>
>>>>How much money (s)he can get from it in the following cases:
>>>>
>>>>1)The program is at similiar level to Crafty
>>>
>>>Not much.  As a winboard engine (i.e. no GUI) then I'd expect you'd sell at most
>>>50 copies.  The price is not that important as long as it is less than $20 per
>>>copy. Basically on 'collectors' would buy it.
>>>
>>>>2)The program is at similiar level to Ruffian
>>>
>>>This is probably the Gandalf 4 scenario.  I'd expect you'd sell about 200 copies
>>>(in total) as long as the price is $15 - $30
>>>
>>>>3)The program is at similiar level to Fritz8
>>>
>>>You will not have the brand equity of Fritz but I expect you'd sell about 500 to
>>>1000 copies depending upon marketing.  I doubt the price point can be any more
>>>than $25 - $35
>>
>>but how are you going to pay for those 10 hours you need for each person that
>>buys your 'winboard' engine if it is without interface of its own?
>>
>>that's 10000 hours of helpdesk. no one can give helpdesk of 10k hours for just
>>$30k a year.
>>
>>>>4)The program is 100 elo better than Fritz8
>>
>>>You'd need good marketing but I think you could sell 3000 copies at this
>>>strength - I recon you could also get $50 a copy.  Of course if it was really
>>>this strong your best bet would be to get someone like ChessBase to sell it.
>>>Then I think you could sell 8000 copies at $45 i.e. quite serious money.
>>
>>isn't ruffian 100 points better than fritz8 when using same openingsbook?
>>
>>Please turn off learning in fritz (after each game delete book simply) and let
>>it play at random. do same thing with ruffian. take care they use same PGN book.
>
>No need for pgn
>You can play the nunn match under Fritz and use different positions than the
>nunn positions.
>
>The difference between Ruffian and Fritz8 will be smaller than the difference in
>the ssdf but I will be surprised if Ruffian discovered to be 100 elo better.
>
>I guess that Ruffian will be something like 50 elo weaker that means losing
>450-350.
>
>Maybe somebody can do it because I do not have the time to do a fair match at
>long time control between Ruffian and Fritz8.0.0.8 and I know your opinion about
>blitz.
>
>opening positions can be chosen as all the possible 400 openings of 2 plies.
>I hope that you do not claim that I chose these positions to help Fritz.
>
>If you do not like these positions I agree to different positions like random
>800 positions from the games that programs got after 20 plies in the am/com
>in WBEC.
>>
>>See who wins. my money on ruffian.
>>
>>ruffian is free engine.
>>
>>so that basically answers uri's question.
>>
>>A solution without interface never sells of course.
>
>The author of Ruffian never tried to sell it.

No.

I did do some serious matches ruffian versus others and it is not your -50
points but +100 points, so you have no right to guess here wildly.

You can check it out if you do some serious games. So not the silly 40/40 levels
that Leo plays at his P3 hardware (still at p3 hardware btw?), but like 3
minutes a move K7 versus K7 like i have here.

After a few games you will understand it soon like i did.

>Uri

Best regards,
Vincent



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